Welcome to education (level 6+) in Ireland. If you are attending a further or higher education institute there are a number of words and phrases that you might hear thrown about by lectures and the odd fellow student. Indeed you may even be a lecturer trying to bluff you’re way through another conversation with the Quality Assurance Officer at your institute. The good news is that we’re here to translate the language of education for you. The difficulty in Ireland is that for such a small country we have a number of higher education institutions, each with its own history, structure and procedures and therefore there are differences in terminology used denoting roughly the same activity or function within institutes. We’ve one our best for you, so here goes...

Accreditation of the prior (experimental) Learning (AP(E)L)

APEL is used as an alternative to formal qualifications to assess a student’s suitability to enter higher education.

Anonymous marking

Anonymous marking (sometimes called blind marking or marking by numbers) is a system of assessment where the identity of the student is not known to the marker. The basic aim of introducing anonymous marking is to avoid any risk of subconscious discrimination or actual discrimination by the marker which may arise because of the students; race, gender, background or if they’re just annoying.

Bologna Process

The Bologna Process is the phrase often used to describe the creation of a ‘European Higher Education Area’ (EHEA). The process started with the Bologna Declaration (1999) which all the Ministers for Education in Europe signed up too, including Ireland and then subsequently a number of other declarations.

There are a number of key objectives to the process including the harmonising of degree standards and quality assurance levels across the EHEA. All the countries in the EHEA are also to move to a 3 cycle system of higher education with Bachelors; Masters and Doctoral degrees. For Ireland this means relatively little change as we were already structured in this way but it means big changes for some other countries. We are still undergoing this process of change in Europe.

The Bologna Process had a number of benefits to offer including ease of international mobility of students and staff, student participation in the governance of higher education, public responsibility for higher education and an increased social dimension.

Irelands National Information Site on the Bologna Process
www.bologna.ie

Credits – ECTS

ECTS stands for European Credit Transfer (and accumulation) System. As a rule of thumb one fulltime academic year of study corresponds to 60 ECTS credits in all countries. How this is divided amongst modules is up to the higher education institution.

In Ireland there is sometimes some confusion over how many hours teaching should be assigned to/correlated with an ECTS credit. This is not the correct emphasis. The concept is that the total number of credits should be based on the ‘student effort hours’ required to successfully complete the course. It’s not just about teaching it’s also about learning.

Department

Department is usually the lowest management level in the higher education institute and is composed of the same subject area. The term ‘school’ is sometimes used instead.

Faculty

Faculty is the term usually used to describes the middle management level in higher education institutes. Sometimes the terms ‘school’ or more recently ‘college’ are also used.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes should be a clear description of what student should be able to do after having successfully completed the work of the module. There is still debate among academic about the type of wording that should be used to describe learning outcomes. It is generally felt that there should be an emphasis on “actions” rather than simply listing of content. The wording of learning outcomes should help the student understand the level of work that is required and expectations

Postgraduate student

A student on a course of study which normally requires a first degree as a condition of entry.

Problem Based Learning (PBL)

PBL is a way of teaching and learning where students are presented with a ‘problem’ or typical case in their subject area and asked to resolve the issue by working in teams, learning the required knowledge along the way. This has become a very popular way of delivering modules in recent years and not always to the joy of students everywhere! The positives are that it can potentially boost student interest and engagement in their learning.

Quality Assurance & Enhancement

Quality Assurance is the means by which an institution can guarantee with confidence and certainty, that the standards and quality of its educational provision are being maintained and enhanced.

Quality Enhancement is the process of positively changing activities based on quality assurance processes in order to provide for a continuous improvement in the quality of institutional provision.

The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education
www.enqa.eu
The Further Education and Training Awards Council
www.fetac.ie
The Higher Education and Training Awards Council
www.hetac.ie
Irish Higher Education Quality Network
www.iheqn.ie
Irish Universities Quality Board
www.iuqb.ie
National Qualifications Authority of Ireland
www.nqai.ie

Modularisation

Modularisation involves a reorganisation of the courses making up academic programmes into modules.

Modules

A module represents a self-contained fraction of a student's work load for the year and carries a unique examination and/or assessment mark. The size of a module is indicated by its credit (ECTS) weighting. The number of credits (ECTS) allocated to each module will vary depending on the fraction of work it accounts for. Each year of a degree programme will be worth a certain number of credits and students will take a number of modules to make up this total.

Module descriptors

This is the description of the course containing information on the intended learning outcomes, content, teaching and assessment methods for the course. These can vary from the brief to the extensive. As a student you have access to this information. They can usually be found in the library or you could just ask your lecturer.

Semesterisation

Semesterisation is a method of organising the academic year. Semesterisation is the division of the academic year into two terms, each called a semester, within each of which is contained all the teaching, assessment and examinations for that semester. In a semesterised system, programmes of study are made up of courses organised in semester-length modules. Exams are held at the end of each semester and grades are usually awarded before the start of the next semester.

Student Centred Learning

Student Centred Learning is about putting the student at the centre of the educational process. It is the view that knowledge is constructed by students and that the lecturer is a facilitator of learning rather than a presenter of information.

Student Feedback

Student feedback is where information from students on their total student experience particularly their academic experience (for quality assurances purposes) is collected, analysed, published, and acted on.

Undergraduate

Student aiming for a first degree, higher education certificate, or diploma or equivalent.

Virtual Learning Environments (VLE)

A virtual learning environment is a software system designed to support teaching and learning in an educational setting. A VLE will normally work over the Internet and provide a collection of tools such as those for assessment (particularly of types that can be marked automatically, such as multiple choice), communication, uploading of content, return of students' work, peer assessment, administration of student groups, collecting and organising student grades, questionnaires and tracking tools. Examples of VLEs include Blackboard, WebCT and Moodle.